Decline of Test Cricket

Something very similar is happening in cricket—as a part of the entertainment industry. With the T20, a new innovation has been introduced and the monopoly of cricket boards is waning. The big casualty of this change is going to be Test matches. The economic forces against it are just too strong.

The Indian Premier League (IPL) in itself is an interesting and professionally executed experiment but Twenty20 will kill Test cricket by destroying the first-class structure that props up the international game. No ambitious administrator, no dedicated sycophant, will waste his time jockeying for position on provincial cricket boards when the spoils are immeasurably greater in the IPL.

The ICC cricket committee, chaired by Sunil Gavaskar, who has written several newspaper columns praising the IPL in recent times, met in Dubai to debate the impact of T20 cricket. “Following the changing cricket landscape after the explosion of T20 cricket, the committee will discuss international cricket as the pinnacle of the game, the protection and promotion of Test cricket, the impact of T20 on other formats of the game and the impact of domestic leagues on the international game,” an ICC spokesperson said.

The IPL pay packets, for a month and a half of cricket, are more than those offered by cricket boards to most players for the whole year. And, this is just the beginning. After all, the amounts being paid to players are nothing compared with the money spent on acquiring and publicizing the franchise.

So, if the spectators and the best players care more for IPL and other leagues like it, would Test cricket survive? It will, but in a state that will remind us of Davis Cup. Where the top players play for their countries only intermittently and nobody knows or cares who the champion is.

It’s a rare time when there is no test cricket or ODI’s being played. Other than to a couple of months leading up to a World Cup, tours consisting of both forms of the game are constantly taking place. At the moment there is none of it, just T20 games in Sri Lanka and India.

Finally, Only time will tell the real impact of T20 on the overall structure of the game. One thing is for sure: it has shown that cricket is a game and that cricket could be fun.

By: khemraj
Published: 05/14/08